Ron Pickering

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:30

A castaway today is a man once described as a moral rearmour of sport. For the past forty years, he's devoted his life to teaching it to athletes, preaching its virtues to the public, and commentating on it with the BBC. He's also been unafraid to reveal the problems of modern sport, such as racism, violence, the use of drugs, and chamoteurism, in a way which has made him an important and outspoken figure. He is Ron Pickering. Ron, welcome to Your Desert Island. What about your passion for sport? Did that start as a very young man? Yes, it did, I guess.

Ron Pickering1:01

I guess when I was a kid in school in the East End of London growing up, the lack of facilities, the fact we, you know, we did the high jump in the school playground on a fibre mat and we didn't have any grass and we had to make facilities, that was part of it. Plus the fact that most of the PE teachers had gone off to the war, so by the time I was in the sixth form of the grammar school, I was running junior school PE and I was always the teacher and the coach rather than the performer, although I did make Victor Lodorum the all-round champion of the school at the same time as my present wife was Vitrix Lodorum, except that she made it five years running from thirteen right the way through. She was unbeatable and it just astonished me, you know, how good kids could be. And what I loved about it as well was that it was based on this lovely ethic that it's about fair play and you make it up as you go along. Anybody can cheat if they want, but really the rules are about it being fair and equal for all, that you've got to be the guardian.

Presenter1:53

And that's you do the sort of concept of sport that you've stuck with and fought for throughout your years. We'll talk more about that later on, of course. What about your father? Was he a an influence in the in the sporting side?

Ron Pickering1:53

Uh

Ron Pickering1:56

Bullfrog

Ron Pickering1:58

They talk about it.

Ron Pickering2:03

Well, as a bare-knuckle fighter and a pool room blazer, I suppose, yeah. My father was a hard man in every sense, a tremendous influence, a great principle man, but he fought the black shirts in the east end of London, but he made his living off a billiard queue and had done a bit of bare-knuckle fighting and was a steward at Blackfriars Ring. So I could never live up to his standards of toughness, of macho. You know, he expected me to take on the world and come out the winner almost every time. And I've never seen him, so sadly gone now, but I never saw him afraid of anything on two legs or four legs. He was just fearless. He worried me because I couldn't maintain those standards. From what you tell me, it doesn't seem to be a very musical background. Not at all. There's not a musical note in the family, not from my family, my existing family. My kids love music, absolutely adore it. We all do. We play records and tapes all the time. And we haven't got a musical note between us. And if two of us sing in the bath, well, it's purgatory. I tell you that.

Presenter2:58

But

Ron Pickering2:59

Well, let let's find out about your musical taste, then.

Presenter3:01

No.

Ron Pickering3:01

Yeah. What what's your your first choice?

Presenter3:02

Tom

Ron Pickering3:02

Well, I go back to the early fifties when a group of us, a gang of guys, you know, the gang, the peer group was the thing of the time. And they were into music and all of them, it seemed to me, had abilities. And my best friend played the piano and they played jazz, traditional jazz, in a lovely way. And I thought I'd start off with Ottilie Patterson, with Lonnie Donegan playing banjo before he started singing really, Chris Barber's band and Care This Love.

Speaker 23:26

I would fly from tree to tree.

Speaker 23:39

I'd build my name

Speaker 23:44

So high up in the air.

Speaker 23:50

Let the bird boy

Presenter3:55

Ron, was there ever any doubt at all in your life that uh you'd do anything other than make a career out of sport?

Ron Pickering4:01

No, I don't think so. I suppose

Ron Pickering4:03

It was either sport or teaching. I'm not sure which came first. I was the patrol leader and the troop leader and the king of the kids, as it were. And that sort of destined me to go into that sort of area. And when I came out of the army, it was quite natural for me to want to go to a college of physical education. I wanted to teach physical education. It was the only job I ever really wanted to do. I knew that it was something that I could do pretty well, and I always wanted to do.

Presenter4:28

Why do you believe that sport is so important? It's been your passion for forty years now.

Ron Pickering4:33

Why? Well, I don't think anything else, no human institution would have survived thirty-three centuries.

Ron Pickering4:40

Unless it was based upon idealism. I think if it was just competition, the cup final would have survived about twelve years, ten years. It was handed on by philosophers and educationists that said, Look, this is the greatest thing we've got to hand on to the next generation. In terms of an international exchange, in terms of peace, in terms of getting people together so that they can get rid of frustration, so they can compete fairly and honestly and openly and in a whole range of activities. And it is that idealism that has kept it. There's nothing else that's kept it that long. And I think that something as good as that has to be preserved, because I don't think we've got anything better to hand to the next generation. I really don't.

Presenter5:23

But how much does sport reflect what happens in sport? How much does it reflect what's happening in society, generally speaking? Totally.

Ron Pickering5:29

In my favorite.

Presenter5:29

In my view, it

Ron Pickering5:29

Totally and this is why it's absurd for politicians to point the finger at sport and say, clean your game up and get rid of violence in soccer. How can you ask soccer to get rid of violence when violence is in our society and nobody in society, not the politicians, can't get rid of it? So that's a nonsense. It's naïve and it's insensitive to say the least. And it always astonishes me that no political party has ever taken sport seriously. They've never given it the backing it deserves. They cannot even understand that at the time of winning the sixty-six World Cup or at the time of the Olympic Games, this country raises its morale in a way that

Ron Pickering6:04

Except for a Falklands War, and heaven forbid we've got to choose between those two. Jingoism is there, but you know, we're darn good losers and we're darn good winners as well. We don't overact as the Americans did in Los Angeles. No, it's an uplifting time for the nation as a whole and for a whole bunch of kids who really are inspired by that figure. You know what Olga Corbett did for gymnastics, you know, one day, she filled the world's gymnasium. What Daly Thompson does for our kids now is fill our athletic tracks, and we should be looking at the virtues and getting rid of the vices if there's time.

Ron Pickering6:34

Right, let's move on to a second choice of record. Well, I we'll move up market a little. We'll go for Domingo from Boem, and it's Che Gelida Menina.

Speaker 26:56

Yeah.

Speaker 27:09

Are you

Speaker 27:14

Yeah.

Speaker 27:33

Ah, my God.

Speaker 27:36

Before

Presenter7:44

Ron, you mentioned your attitude towards for about how you see it as a very, very important aspect of the society we live in. And you said also that politicians uh don't understand its power. Why is that? I mean, if it's so self-evident to you and to other people, why don't politicians use it properly?

Ron Pickering7:59

Well, I suppose if they're dealing with the day-to-day matters of war and peace and poverty and starvation and taxes, they all, on the face of it, are obviously very much more important. Sadly, though, we have to put the other things into a perspective as well and look in the long term. And I don't think they ever do that. I remember Dennis Howell inviting me to talk to a select committee or someone in the House of Commons. You know, they have a sports society. I think five turned up. I mean, and it's never been in any manifesto. And we've tried now. Those of us that are concerned with the future of sport have written to the party leaders to say, look, can you not just take this a little more seriously? Because if we don't provide facilities in the same way that we provide sewerage and street lighting and maternity hospitals, if you want every facility to pay, the next generation of kids are not going to have sport as one of their choices in their recreation and leisure time. And there's four million of them that have got nothing but enforced leisure time. And if we don't take it seriously, we've got a a dramatic problem within society, which is there for all to see. And remember, we invented half the world's sports. We've got the richest sports culture in the world, and we should be preserving it now.

Speaker 28:56

Yeah.

Presenter9:07

How how little do we spend? I mean, how little does the government spend? Is there a comparison you can give us?

Ron Pickering9:12

Yes. Oh, we spend about uh on let's say elite sport, that shop window. Now the local authorities do a tremendous job in providing, but for the shop window, we spend about one twentieth of what West Germany spends, about one tenth of what France spends, and about ten percent less than Portugal spends. Less than Portugal.

Ron Pickering9:34

You know, that's where we're at. Bottom of the European spending league.

Ron Pickering9:38

Let's have another choice of record. Where are we now? Well, of course, being in the communication business, I have to pick someone that makes the hair in the back of my neck go up when I hear them speak. It could have been Churchill, it could have been John F. Kennedy, but I've chosen Martin Luther King. I had a dream.

Speaker 19:53

For rights reasons, we are unable to bring you this choice.

Presenter9:57

Ron, you've talked about and criticized the government's attitude towards sport. There seems to me to be a kind of hypocrisy here. Given that they're not that interested in sport and that they won't give it proper funding, they do use it, do they not, as a muscle of theirs when the convenience suits them. For instance, one thinks about the ban in Moscow on the Olympic team and the attitude toward apartheid. What's your attitude toward that?

Ron Pickering10:17

I think it's hypocrisy or you know, it's nonsense to say that sports and politics are not mixed, they've been interrelated ever since there's been sport. But it's when politicians use sport as a platform, and it's happened, it happened with Carter, it happened with Trudeau, it's happened at the time of a major Olympic Games. When they can get political capital out of it, and Margaret Thatcher was the same, they use sport and say, We don't want you to do this or we want you to do that, we want you to boycott. And yet, the need to boycott South Africa has been with us for ten years, and yet we seem to have an ambivalent attitude at government level over that. When everybody in sport, it's the only thing that sport has ever done very seriously on a political level. It was sport that threw out South Africa. They made the decision, and they expected government to follow that lead. And the lead has been, well, to say followed is barely putting it there. I mean, we are behind the rest of the Commonwealth even, and we almost put our Commonwealth Games in jeopardy. And I think if we don't get the Birmingham bid for the Olympic Games in 1992, it will be the rest of the world judging us on our political attitudes to sport, and that's sad. Choice of record. I'm going back to my youth again. Doebell's jazz record shop in Charing Cross Road, where we used to gather around.

Speaker 211:24

You doing well.

Ron Pickering11:25

And the great Billie Holiday. It was between Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith, but Billie Holiday's recordings have lasted just that little bit longer. And I think I'll choose her singing. I'll be seeing you.

Speaker 211:40

Seeing you

Speaker 211:44

In all the old, familiar places

Speaker 211:52

That this heart of mine embraces.

Speaker 211:59

All day through.

Presenter12:05

Ron Pickering, we've talked uh a lot about what you think about sport and then we've we've touched on on you as a sort of a sports coach and administrator. What about you as the athlete? I mean, would you have given up all of this to have won an Olympic medal?

Ron Pickering12:18

Yes, although I knew very early on that I wouldn't I'd give up most of this to be able to sing like Pevarotti.

Ron Pickering12:23

Anything which smacks of excellence. But having said that,

Ron Pickering12:28

I get a good deal of satisfaction from my role. I mean, there's a lot of joy. I mean, I'm generally seen as firing bullets in directions, but I also spend most of my life rubbing shoulders with the sporting greats, my heroes, your heroes. So I have I have all the fun and all the emotional contact from sport. I'm not just a critic of sport. I'm you know, I'm an absolute fan from the tip of my toes.

Presenter12:48

Well let's talk about then some of those things that sport's given you. I mean the moments in sport. Looking back in in this association we've had for more than forty years. Who have been the the performers who thrilled you most of all and why?

Ron Pickering12:59

Oh, no, that's a tricky one because there's so many. It's plucking them. Alerta, four Olympic golds, always against the odds, never the world record holder, going in the circle, dominating the opposition with great dignity, you know. Bob Beeman leaping out of the pit and putting a new dimension onto jumping and crushing Lynn and I. We were there together. Lynn did this. Yeah, exactly.

Presenter13:17

Yeah, exactly.

Ron Pickering13:19

You know, they were terrific times. My own wife's performance as a European long-term champion way back in 1954. The joy of seeing the great era of Daly Thompson, Sebastian Coe, Steve Obet, Alan Wells and Stevie Cram. That, I mean, we're living through now better. I mean, for all the heroes I had in the past, and they included Rockfist Rogan and Alf Tupper and Wilson of the Wizards, but there's none

Presenter13:46

Impossible question I'm going to ask you now. Is there one performance that you've seen in the arena that summed up your ideal, the athletic ideal that you hold?

Presenter13:58

There is some

Ron Pickering13:58

So many that they blur. You know, I want my Olympic hero to be superlative in every sense and then to have the quiet dignity and show every kid's going to find. They don't always do that. They sometimes leave a little time gap. They sometimes have to mature into it. But I don't know. Sebastian Coe moving with such elegance over 800 metres, not 1500 meters, gives me a mental image that is refined. And Daly Thompson's third round discus throw in the last Olympic Games when he was on the brink of a precipice, there was no going back. There is no better competitor than him when his back's against the wall. And 80,000 people couldn't watch and wanted to turn their back. And he had one throw left. And he eyed the 80,000 and said, if this is what it's about, this is where I'm at.

Presenter14:47

That, I think, would capture it pretty well for me. And the next choice in music, I think, sort of captures musically, doesn't it? What you think about it?

Ron Pickering14:52

It's the only piece of music that would really encourage me to get up and run. I hate jogging, I loathe it. But I mean, I really if I was on a desert island and there was a sandy beach, I think I'd have to have Vangelis' chariot of fire. It would move me to get up and really start running again.

Presenter15:40

Ron, you mentioned earlier the lack of money in sport and yet you said that uh you've got this kind of ambivalent situation where you've got athletes now earning huge amounts of money. I take it you don't object to them earning the money. No. What what is your objection then to this money that's come into into athletics? I don't want them to be

Ron Pickering15:57

paid under the counter in brown paper envelopes. And that is happening, isn't it? I don't want them to be paid for losing rather than winning, and that is happening. I don't want them to be paid just for turning up rather than doing well, as has happened with the ninety thousand pounds for Zola bud.

Ron Pickering16:11

And I don't want them to be gross amounts anyway, because I think that destroys the principle, because it induces greed. I want them to appreciate that if there's money to come into the sport, it has to be spread around more generously and more fairly, and it has to get down to the grassroots. It can't just be the entrepreneurs, the agents and the four or five flyers that become millionaires. That's no proper way to behave in a sport which relies absolutely on the democratic principles. But what about the governing body of that sport? I mean, what's that doing about the situation?

Ron Pickering16:42

Well, not enough, although in fairness to them, they've only recently won the pools, as it were. You know, one's got to be fair and say, We're worried about the newfound wealth. We want you to be responsible. And of course, they're saying, Well, give us a chance to be responsible. And I am giving them a chance to be responsible. I am pointing out, though, what experience has shown us what's happened in other sports when newfound wealth has flooded in. Like what? Well, tennis, for example, which is always being held up as the great paragon of virtue. Do we want five or six McEnroes showing off disgracefully at Wimbledon? I don't think so. I don't think that's where we want to go. And really, we've still got tennis stars that are being paid a fortune for being very mediocre tennis players. And I don't think that's a good example either. And there's no doubt that the public have an insatiable appetite for sport on television particularly, but even at Wimbledon itself. And they will pay magnificent sums of money. But there's a responsibility there. I don't want the public to be priced out of seeing sport at its very best. And they were in Los Angeles. $250 a ticket for the opening ceremony was a disgrace. It's obscene. And it meant that we're handing sport over to the rich. Their sport is not about that. It never has been about it, and it can't it loses its idealism and its base the moment it becomes that. What would you do though about somebody like McEnroe?

Ron Pickering18:00

What would your answer be? Send him off. That's the first thing. And what's more, I think if it was done early enough and he saw the reason of the way, I think he would have been a much better fellow and a much better player. I'm just picking on McEnroe, and it's a bit tough to pick on because there have been other Nastasi was almost as bad before him. I just think that the tennis officials have bucked the issue. They've really allowed the behaviour to get a disgraceful scene before they would throw him off because they think all the paying punters would object to having their afternoon spot. I think they might have gone down in history as putting tennis back on the rails. And I think that a lot of even the paying punters would have appreciated a much firmer line.

Presenter18:00

By the f

Ron Pickering18:39

Another choice of record. Where are we now? Oh, I think I've got to go for Streisen. Somewhere in this eight she has to be because she sustained me, I suppose, for something like fifteen years, and uh her tapes are in my car, and I've chosen the love inside.

Speaker 218:54

I'm here to face the sorrow

Speaker 218:58

The dream we sailed was far and wide

Speaker 219:05

Gotta give a little of a loving sign Not to take apart this breaking heart

Presenter19:24

Ron, you caused quite a stir recently when you made a a speech in which you criticised most aspects of modern sport today, but one thing particularly got the press and that was your condemnation of the use of of drugs in sport. Now I think that when people hear this they have a a vague notion of what's going on, but I don't think they they ever get anywhere near the truth of really what's happening. First of all, how big a problem is it in sport today?

Ron Pickering19:47

It's a huge problem and it's growing all the time. And what's more, it's a problem which, like drugs in society, is seeping down and down the age group until the youngsters are involved. And there, of course, the damage is critical. I'm afraid that drugs in sport have been with us the 33 centuries that I mentioned. You know, the ancient Greeks, they ate sheep's testicles, in fact, to give them strength. And they're not so far away from doing that now. You know, this is the problem of the anabolic steroid and the testosterone and even the untestable drugs. I'm afraid.

Ron Pickering20:14

Part of success, part of pushing back the boundaries, and part of the pressure of greed and in terms of the rewards means that the boundaries blur and the values slip. And if pushed to the physical limit, as an American survey showed, if you ask athletes whether they'd be Olympic champion, even if it meant shortening their life by ten years, sixty percent of them would take it. Yes, they would take it. And that means that there's bad leadership, and that means that we haven't got enough of our great athletes who have got there without the use of drugs saying to the rest of society, as Daly Thompson has done for me, listen, I'm the best in the world under any standards. You put any measurement against me, and it doesn't matter what these guys are taking, I'll still knock them off. Now, that has got to come through loud and clear, and it's not coming through loud and clear. The other thing is this.

Speaker 120:37

Got it.

Ron Pickering21:04

There are also pressures from the entrepreneurs and the agents to make sure that we get the best here, whether or not the rules are going to be jealously guarded. And that is a problem at the moment. We cannot be seen to be white knights charging around on horses, you know, looking for moral rearmament when half the athletes know that half the rules are being bent by the rule makers.

Ron Pickering21:24

they're becoming the rule breakers. And that's what I'm trying to tell the sport at the moment. Of course, they're they're uncomfortable with it and they think I'm being hypercritical, but at the same time, those athletes must know that we're all working in the same direction. And I don't think that's happening.

Presenter21:39

Over the

Ron Pickering21:39

Yeah.

Presenter21:39

Uh

Ron Pickering21:39

Uh

Ron Pickering21:40

Uh

Presenter21:41

Other than

Ron Pickering21:41

Um

Presenter21:41

That's fair.

Ron Pickering21:41

Oh, sure. Poor old athletics gets the finger pointed at it because we do all the testing. You know, I mean, athletics gets the finger of scorn pointed at it because we started sex testing, but there are a whole number of other sports which they'd started when we did, if you look around. No, just about every sport. It's as simple as that. There's no administrator from sport that can eyeball me and say there are no drugs in my sport. The fact that they haven't tested is an embarrassment to them, and if they've got nothing to hide, they would go into testing. But look at the Sports Council's initiative, who are going to withhold their grant from sports that won't be tested. We've only got about 10 sports that will be tested, and we have about 100 sports. And so there is a problem. Of course, there's a problem. It starts at a very sort of simplistic level, and it grows and grows from that. The worst things happen is when the sport gets rich and there's money in it, and people have got money to burn, and they often burn it in this way. And they travel around the world, and they rub shoulders with others, and they find out what's going on, and it becomes quite a sophisticated issue. And also, there are plenty of people there that want to rub shoulders with the greats and be part of them, part of their party that say, take this, it'll be okay. You know, I'll look after you. And that means that, as well as the athletes breaking the rules, it means that coaches are breaking the rules. It means that doctors are breaking the rules. It means that pharmacists are breaking the rules. And that's what we've got to establish. The poisons right the way through. Absolutely.

Ron Pickering22:57

Ron, another record. Now we've had Barbara Streisen and uh and I'm going to go back uh to the opera and this time it's Pavarotti. Magnificent voice and I've chosen the aria Nessendorme.

Speaker 223:09

But I'm scared I use my major Uh

Speaker 223:16

When all their songs are love, God

Speaker 123:16

Holy USA

Speaker 223:36

Oh John

Speaker 223:40

Uh

Presenter24:11

Ron, you've spent, as I say, forty years fighting for some of the cause we've been talking about uh today. Do you think that you you will have made any difference? I mean, are you optimistic about the future?

Ron Pickering24:22

I'm not very optimistic, although every time I get up and make a a statement of that sort, I get a tremendous amount of mail and a tremendous number of phone calls about people who really believe and want to do something about it. I've got one tremendous file on it. I suppose what I ought to do is commit myself to writing, and then at least I can say that's where I stand, that's where I'm at. But I don't write particularly well.

Ron Pickering24:43

I really have got to sometime. And I stay out of the establishment in order to fire bullets because I think I'm better value outside the establishment. You know, I was for six years the minister's nominee on the sports council, the sports minister, and I felt emasculated. I couldn't do anything from within. And so I it's better for me to stand back. And I honestly believe, my God, that half the time there are a lot of people within sports administration, although they're sitting there taking it on the chin and thinking I'm giving them a whacking, there are a lot of people within sports administration who welcome it because they can't get up and say what they believe to be so.

Ron Pickering25:14

Final choice of record then, Ron. Well, I always think that the youth of today are really much more responsive than we ever give them credit for. Most of the time they take the lead. They've never let me down. I think they're magnificent. And when Lennon writes lyrics like the lyrics of Imagine, then I think he's telling us that we maybe have let them down and we ought to look at what they've got to say. I'll choose not John Lennon's recording of it, but really the beautiful voice of Randy Crawford.

Speaker 225:41

You may say

Speaker 225:43

I'm a dreamer

Speaker 225:49

But I'm not the only one

Speaker 225:57

Maybe someday you will join us

Speaker 226:04

And the world will be as one

Presenter26:09

So Ron, now you're on your your desert island. Now, do you think you'd make a fist of it?

Ron Pickering26:13

Yeah.

Ron Pickering26:15

You know, uh the awful truth about it is that as a young lad I was a king scout and a bushman's thong and I could track and I could do all I've forgotten everything about it. And it seemed to me the most critical qualities would be things like an ability to fish and an ability to say I can't do any of those. No, I could just about get the shelter up, I reckon. And I'd be terribly lonely because I'm not good on my own. So it would be hell on wheels for me, I think.

Speaker 226:32

Uh no

Presenter26:40

All right, now of all the records then that you've chosen, you've got to imagine that seven are whipped away in some sort of tidal wave or something, one's left, which would be the record that you want.

Ron Pickering26:49

That was the toughest of all. I suppose chariots of fire would inspire me to get fitter and I'd survive longer and I'd do much more running and slim down and do all the things I should. But if I had to listen to something that was emotionally satisfying and inspiring, I think it would be Pavarotti's Nessendorma. And what about the one luxury object? Inanimate object? The luxury item, I guess.

Ron Pickering27:13

Might have to be a typewriter if there was sufficient paper to keep me going, and that might give me the ambition to get down to write the book that I feel I ought to.

Presenter27:20

Yeah.

Presenter27:21

And what about the book to read? Because you've got the Bible on the island and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare. Magnificent. I guess.

Ron Pickering27:28

You won't be surprised if I choose the Guinness Book of Records. I can delve into that any time, anywhere, and look to see why man is the competitive animal that he is, why Decouverton's challenge to the youth of the world to push back those boundaries has never ceased to amaze me. It's done in every walk of life. And I think that would sustain me greatly.

Presenter27:50

Ron Pickering, thank you.

Speaker 127:58

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.